In recent years nickel is mostly produced from lateritic ore deposits such as nontronite, limonite, etc. Resource estimation is difficult for laterite deposits as they have a weak and heterogeneous form. 3D modeling software are rather suitable for deposits having tabular or vein type ores. In this study the most appropriate estimation technique for resource estimation of nickel laterite deposits was investigated.
One of the known nickel laterite deposits in Turkey is located at Tü / rkmenç / ardagi - Gö / rdes region. Since the nickel (Ni) grade recovered from drilling studies seem to be very low, a reconciliation pit having dimensions of 40 m x 40 m x 15 m in x-y-z directions was planned by Meta Nikel Kobalt Mining Company (META), the license owner of the mine, to produce nickel ore.
13 core drilling and 13 reverse circulation drilling (RC) and 26 column samplings adjacent to each drillholes were located in this area. Those three sampling results were compared to each other and as well as the actual production values obtained from reconciliation pit. On the other side 3D computer modeling was also used to model the nickel resource in Tü / rkmenç / ardagi - Gö / rdes laterites. The results obtained from both inverse distance weighting and kriging methods were compared to the results of actual production to find out the applicability of 3D modeling to laterite deposits.
Modeling results showed that Ni grade of the reconciliation pit in Tü / rkmenç / ardagi - Gö / rdes, considering 0.5% Ni cut-off value, by using drillholes data, inverse distance weighting method estimates 622 tonnes with 0.553% Ni and kriging method estimates 749 tonnes with 0.527% Ni. The actual production pit results provided 4,882 tonnes of nickel ore with 0.649% Ni grade. These results show that grade values seem to be acceptable but in terms of tonnage, there are significant differences between theoretical estimated values and production values.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:METU/oai:etd.lib.metu.edu.tr:http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12614978/index.pdf |
| Date | 01 September 2012 |
| Creators | Gencturk, Bilgehan |
| Contributors | Karpuz, Celal |
| Publisher | METU |
| Source Sets | Middle East Technical Univ. |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | M.S. Thesis |
| Format | text/pdf |
| Rights | To liberate the content for METU campus |
Page generated in 0.0019 seconds